Chương 78: Book 1, Chapter 78: Fire Above, Fire Below

What a terrible evening to hunt monsters. The forest itself seemed twisted in agony, the last gasps of the sun spiralling through the gnarled, grasping branches that dragged at their sides as they passed. Above, the clouds overhead were leering spectators, flushed brightly like drunkards as John and his compatriots marched toward the slaughter.

The wind felt dead, more like an occasional, fluttering heartbeat that blew the scent of something festering and rotten over them, like a butcher had dumped a load of offal onto blazing concrete and left it to cook in the sun. Step by step, they walked towards the final battle, every eye in their procession scanning the treeline for lurking danger, silent as the grave.

Yuki was the spear tip, guiding them through the brush as every member of the team carefully stepped around low-hanging branches and over every piece of detritus that might snap and give away their position. One way or another, it would all end tonight. The Nameless. Kiku, if she were there. If he and his friends emerged victorious, that would be that, back to their lives with a new appreciation for just how bad the world could get.

It might be a few weeks or months yet to root out any remaining spiders from the woods, but nobody in this region would have to worry about monsters slipping down their throats and puppeting them if he had a say about it. However, if the Nameless won—if Kiku, if she was still around, got her way… John didn't want to think about it. He certainly wouldn't let the spiders take him alive if it came down to it.

The thought of the malicious kitsune's tails wrapping around him, of her hand clamping down over his mouth as she effortlessly overwrote his thoughts, was too much for anyone to bear, never mind one as weak as him. So, there they were, trying to burn out the infestation before it could spread. John shuffled awkwardly, shifting the wooden cylinder the size of a horrifyingly overstuffed hiking backpack that he had strapped to his back.

Thankfully, he had the foresight to remove the detonator, so it wasn't as volatile as it could be. Even if the way the quasi-aerodynamic pointed tip dug into his thigh left much to be desired, it was better than risking breaking the fins upon its base. It probably would have gotten caught on his crossbow. He had half considered asking Rin or Yosuke to carry the load, but his warding seemed better at fully protecting things that one wore than an Aegis.

After all, 'less volatile' hardly meant safe, and if this damned thing went up, he was pretty sure nobody here, save maybe Yuki, could take a thermobaric explosion without turning into a blast shadow. John glanced over his shoulder, making sure that the rambunctious Unbound and the undead were still close behind. They kept a simple marching order: First Yuki at the head, then John, followed by Yosuke, and finally Rin. He shot them a questioning thumbs up, having taught them both the gesture before they left.

Yosuke and Rin both nodded without a word. While the undead was as blank as ever, the expressive Unbound's countenance was unusually grave, a frown carved into her face like a statue's; were it not for the occasional blink, John might have been fooled into thinking she was wearing a mask. Returning the look, John turned back to his route, staying perhaps a dozen steps behind the kitsune as she scouted ahead. In theory, the monsters had no way of knowing they were coming.

From what Yuki had explained, the space was entirely split off from the normal world, with no communication back and forth. In practice… Well, John wasn't going to gamble on what shouldn't be possible for the Nameless. He had gone in and out of the area plenty while testing the boundary, after all, and the spiders could be pretty damned crafty even without Kiku's help. Hence why they were going to hit them with something they had no chance to prepare for.

Kiku was smart, but she wasn't omniscient, and while she quickly adapted her plans around whatever new thing he unveiled, she needed time to do that. Which, of course, was where his newest modification to the previously developed thermobarics came in. Yuki held up a hand, and their whole column ground to a halt. The space ahead looked like any other section of the forest, indistinguishable from the verdant sea of green they were entombed in, but the kitsune had sensed something.

Looking over her shoulder, she gestured for John to step forward, and he did, anticipation building in his gut as she waved her hand, shadow dripping from her fingers as she used a trick he hadn't seen from her in what felt like an age.

"This should be the edge of the barrier. Please check for me," read the floating, shadowy words as an almost foreign nostalgia bloomed in John's chest. Yuki hadn't needed to do that since before he had learned the local tongue. In a way, those were simpler times, unburdened by the duties that now rested on his shoulders, even if he was positively miserable and terrified of his own shadow around his now companion kitsune. He had given her a two week window to recover and get the hell out, hadn't he? Heh.

John wondered whether, had he known what he knows now, if he would have even considered taking her in. John took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, breaking free from his reverie. He needed his head in the game; there wasn't time to mess about. Eyes fluttering open, John gave the kitsune a thumbs up and started creeping forward, carefully stepping around a mess of fallen branches and leaves from the recent storm.

The forest always felt malicious after the winds had swept through and culled the weakest twigs. Maybe it was just an abundance of well-justified caution on his part, though; the Nameless did like their random debris-chic, and it was hard to spot the difference from afar. Tick-tick-tick-tick. John took a step back, and the ticking stopped. His eyes met the kitsune's golden orbs as he turned around, then he pointed to the sky. She nodded. Well, this was it, then.

John tensely set the weapon he had carried upon his back down and slotted the detonator into the open slot with a loud click before latching it into place, readying the contraption. Then, he set down his hoverdisc, powering it up before swapping out the freezing focus on his war gauntlet for telekinesis with but a flick of his wrist. Grabbing the bomb in his grip, John levitated into the sky once he made sure the way was clear of any errant webbing. Ten meters. Twenty. Thirty.

The dusk wind howled around him as he steeled his will. They had one chance to launch a proper ambush; he had to pick a target and let loose as soon as Yuki popped this slice of reality wide open. Who knew what the Nameless could pull off if he faltered, even for a minute? Perhaps they had reinforced doors they could slam shut, blunting the blast wave's effects. Maybe they could burst the 'sealed realm' like an overripe egg sack early and disperse their numbers far and wide, just with slightly more casualties.

They had no way of knowing, but he could only hope and pray that this strike would fly true and shatter their plans, at least for an hour. An hour was all they'd need. Hovering in place, John spun the bomb around, aiming it like a spear toward where their immaterial enemy lay. While his original gauntlet lacked the ability to push enough power into the relatively gentle telekinetic focus to throw it like a dart, his new war gauntlet had no such limitation. He felt it before he saw it.

Yuki's Presence washed over him like a warm wave at the beachside, settling around his shoulders as a warm blanket, enshrouding him in her gentle care. He was shielded against the world as his heart rate slowed, the otherworldly feeling building around him but never becoming truly overwhelming. John breathed it in, and slowly breathed it out; then the world began to bend under the pressure. Shapes sharpened to a razor's edge.

What was and was not cleaved into two, separated by the iron will of the kitsune as she told the world what it must be, and it obeyed. The colours were next: not brightening, not dimming, yet somehow becoming more vivid regardless. More defined. More real, like he was wearing muddy goggles and had just taken them off for the first time.

The rattling calls of the forest's beasts were rich and omnipresent, carrying melodic tones that he had never heard, that he wagered no musician could reproduce if they tried, as they looped back in themselves, creating self-referential choirs of impossibility. He breathed in. The air that flowed into his lungs tasted wrong, and he could feel every particle of faint pollen and dust that flowed into his form.

The scent of distant rot faded; the scent of the forest and petrichor now lingered in his nose, invigorating like walking out into a spring morning after a cold, hard winter. John breathed out. He could feel his own heart quietly beating in his chest, and the blood pumping through every one of his veins. Steadying his aim, John felt his every muscle, tendon, and joint. When he twitched his fingers, he could feel every little imperceptible bump in his workmanship as his fingers trailed over the controls.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. He was a blind man, opening his eyes for the first time. Was being an Unbound something like this? Was this just a taste of what he might never achieve? Why did it feel so natural? Why could he continue to act rather than break down from sensory overload? Yet, the world didn't break into a mosaic of shadow and light, like when Yuki had last exerted herself.

Instead, the world before him shattered like a brittle window with the cry of a wounded angel crashing down to earth, the scintillating shards falling through the air before evaporating like the morning mist. It was a wound in reality, jagged and wretched, into a world that was sick. John's hands shook, and his heart pounded in his chest like a prisoner trying to escape its cage.

A twisted spire of abyssal chitin set upon a field of solidified pitch thrust into the sky, the twisted horn full of bore holes dug deep into sightless depths. Nameless swarmed over its surface, but the slow creatures—which he could see in far more terrible detail than he could ever dream—had yet to notice them. There must have been thousands. John could see nine hundred eighty three crawling over the preci— John dry-heaved as his vision suddenly swam, his hyperawareness continuing to expand. He saw every leg.

Every unseeing, maddened eye, a few slowly turning towards him, yet uncomprehending through their madness. He counted the teeth individually. Some rotted, decay taking them even as they sat next to pearly whites in the same misshapen maws. Perhaps the worst thing was that the realm wasn't bright. It wasn't dark, either. It wasn't… anything. The world had forgotten this place, and it had set its own rules, its incompetent god trying to patch the holes with its eyes closed and a faltering will.

John couldn't tell how he saw into its depths, just that he could. It was enough for him to find his prey. John reached forward with his spare hand and flicked the arming switch. He twitched his fingers, and the missile streaked from his grip as he propelled it forward as fast as he could before releasing it like a shot. It flew through the air, approaching the spire with terrible force, triggering the sensor embedded in the tip.

His poor welder gave its last service as the melting focus was utterly overloaded, pumping far more entropy than it had ever been designed to process, melting a hole into the tower and carving a path into its inner workings before the missile slammed into the open wound, dispersing the material that used to be solid like a layer of pollen. Then, reality snapped back to normal, the horrible portal slamming shut as Yuki banished her empty approximation of Transcendent Alchemy.

John felt empty as the world took on its normal tinge, the impossible details slipping from his vision, even if he could still see them in his mind's eye when he blinked. Once back home on Earth, John had thought about what it would be like for a character from a game to briefly come to life, only to be returned to their cage, fully aware of how much lesser their world was. Was that what it would be like?

His hands shook as he descended back to his allies, but as he approached, he steeled himself, stilling his trembling limbs through sheer force of will alone. This was awful, and every part of him was screaming for him to retreat, to bury himself in work until he could come up with a better solution, but there just wasn't time. It was now or never.

"How long do you need before you can open it back up?" John hurriedly asked Yuki.

"A few breaths more," the kitsune responded, softly panting.

"Not needing to overwrite most of the world's laws makes it much easier to commit." It's go time, then. John snapped to his other two companions. Rin straightened under his attention, but Yosuke stood with casual ease, leisurely reaching up to his impaled head and drawing two of the blades from its mass.

"Rin. Remember, you'll be the tip of the spear alongside Yuki. Yosuke, you'll be the rear guard to the main group. I'll provide air support as we burn everything outside the tower to the ground. Inflict as many casualties as possible, but stay safe. We kill, we kill, and we kill some more, and once we either kill enough or get the Greater Nameless, she pops Transcendent Alchemy and shreds anything that's not us to ribbons. If they cower in the tower, I start killing them through the walls."

"Yes, sensei, I won't let you down!" Rin quickly responded, blade flying free of its sheath with a lightning-fast draw, current arcing along its edge. Yosuke nodded, flicking his wrist to cast aside some lingering corpse fluids off his blades. In the few seconds that they had left, John swapped the filter on his Sentinel System from the Nameless one for his Kiku one, just in case.

It wasn't as if he'd have time to calibrate it properly to read only the actual Nameless, not the ambient environment, if it were even possible with all the interference.

"Be prepared. It is time," Yuki declared, and John's heart seized. Her Presence extended once more, but this time… it felt duller. Hyper-reality set in all the same, of course, but John was ready for his veil to be torn away, and he did not get washed out into the expanse. A fresh wound was carved into reality, reopening a portal that now led into hell. The spire burned, melting like wax as flames cored the skyscraper, an inferno screaming out of its orifices with glowing orange hatred.

The land burned with his wrath, and the Nameless ran about in sheer panic, every horrible, twitching eye widened in maddened terror as the survivors scuttled about their cage for an escape. An eye met his. A horrible scream erupted from the mass, and a sea turned upon them as the creatures saw but four small shapes standing between them and freedom.

"Forward!" John screamed out before he thought it through. His allies surged forward, and John flew into the sky as the portal healed shut behind them. Surveying the battlefield, John saw it repeat itself infinitely towards the edge of the space, a myriad of burning towers and screaming spiders swarming through the distance as the space looped in on itself.

The horde, still numbering hundreds, closed in on his companions below, some of the sea of legs and fangs towards the far end of the field, cutting across where space looped to encircle them with ease. John raised his hand, giving his controls one last test, fingers flexing as he clicked his heat focus into place. Aiming at the center of the horde, he lined up the iron sights on the gauntlet with the casual ease of years of experience. Then, John flexed his fingers.

Heat soared from his gauntlet, the hiss of the moisture in the air turning to steam, hissing a joyous song as John finally used his war gauntlet for its true purpose. It was inelegant. Bulky. Sometimes, he forgot how large it was and smacked it into things. Ill-suited for shop work. The fingers were large and clumsy, and he had to take it off while working regularly. However, he considered none of those design goals beyond the bare minimum. Any civilian uses for it were akin to hammering a nail with a rifle stock.

It was a tool, one that existed to kill things very, very quickly. The world hitched for but a moment, the sheer overwhelming heat impacting the Nameless' collective Aegises, and they stopped being enemies and started being physics. The concentrated beam melted the strange, dark ground below into a blistering, glowing ichor as two dozen spiders simply ceased to be. Eyes turned to John, and numerous spiders in the backlines reared up, giving him only moments to track over to them.

He was too late, and they spat a horrible barrage of thick, grasping silk, each projectile the size of his torso. It didn't matter, as he had plenty of fire to go around. The projectiles burnt to a crisp under a wide, diffused blast, and the only thing that reached him was soft ash. The Nameless in front of the blast fared better as the wide cone softened the blow by the time it reached them.

They were instead "only" ignited and maimed, relegated to non-threats as they spasmed like slugs covered in salt, flailing blindly with no thought given to anything but their death throes. The focus was getting hot, though. The sheer heat threatened to melt it into slag from the weight of magic coursing through its form in these quick bursts, even if his magic reserves were still plenty high. That was an easy fix, though.

John flicked the cold focus into the slot with an easy turn of his wrist as he drew his hand crossbow, firing a quick shot into a group approaching his party from behind. The arrow itself did little. The slowing field that materialized around the Nameless upon being destabilized, however…

With that bit of extra time, John picked out another group and unleashed sheer cold upon them, the hyper-accelerated heat transfer killing another two dozen on the spot as they crumpled into brittle pieces upon hitting the invisible kill field. The only way an outside observer might be able to tell how they died was by a thin layer of fading frost clinging to the ground and a trail of shining, frozen droplets that fell to the earth like rain.

The first waves that he couldn't catch smashed into his allies below, surrounding them, but Yuki was death itself. Where John was a gunship on high, she was Charybdis, claiming all that stepped too close. Dark and light swam around her as two parts of the same whole, coating her claws and fangs, as she flowed from blow to blow.

There was no wasted movement as she bowled through them; each step was a dead Nameless, be they burned away or impaled by light, or perhaps flayed and outright consumed by her impossible shadow. Rin was no slouch, either. Perhaps a storm was not as terrifying as the reaper herself, but her blade sang all the same as single, decisive strikes parted Aegis and flesh alike in a deluge of steel, ice, and lightning. Yosuke… John had never seen him fight before. It was a mercy that they never had to come to blows.

He moved little, but John could tell that his footwork was incredible. It was slow, controlled. Perhaps he was not as showy as the other two, but his blades cut true. That was all that he needed. As John watched, he couldn't help but notice that blades that shouldn't reach all the way through somehow still managed to cleave spiders in two, or a slash that touched nothing still managed to spray a thick arc of black blood. Was it air? No. It was something deeper, something purer.

The truth tickled at the edge of his mind, a nymph dancing beyond his grasp, refusing to be caught beside a flicker at the edge of his vision. John snapped to another approaching clump and snuffed them out like a candle. They killed, and killed, and killed some more, forcing the spiders to climb over their own dead as they built a fortress of corpses around their foes. When the encirclement tightened too much, John blasted a hole through the lines, allowing his allies to take up new defensive positions.

He had to smite the occasional attempt at swatting him from the sky. They died like the rest. Their numbers culled, their waves thinning, even the infatigable hatred of the spiders quaked under their wrath. Yet, there was nowhere to run other than into their burning home. It started slowly, but rapidly picked up speed, as many took their chances with their burning spire rather than facing the extermination that had come for them.

Tick-tick-ticktick-tick-tickticktick— And then John was gone, and the last thing he saw was his flying disc slowly drifting to the ground without its rider.